"Sweeper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his worst," said Townsend, "and then he's best of all. That's logic, as he would say. I wonder what he'll bring back with him. Let's each guess; I guess a carpet sweeper. How ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white kaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours. Between them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent carpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where among the hills ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... decomposition. As usual, none of the natives would defile themselves by touching the dead body. I accordingly gave orders that one of the elephants should drag it about a mile down wind away from the camp. Lord Mayo was brought to the spot, and the sweeper, being of a low caste, attached a very thick rope to the hind legs of the ox; the other end being made fast to the elephant's pad in such a manner as to form traces. The elephant did not exhibit the slightest interest in the proceeding, and everything was completed, the body of the ox being about ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... living room means cleaning the floor and the rugs; dusting the walls, the pictures; cleaning, dusting, and sometimes polishing the furniture. Open the windows top and bottom, dust and brush them inside and out; use a soft brush or a dust mop to take the dust from the floor. Use a carpet sweeper for the rugs unless you have electricity and can use a vacuum cleaner; collect the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... was heard o'er head, Like a chimney-sweeper's lofty summons; And lo! a devil right downward sped, Bringing within his claws so red Two statesmen's characters, found, he said, Last night, on the floor of the House of Commons; The which, with black official grin, He now to the Chief Imp handed in;— Both ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... room is upstairs," Hossein said, and led the way to a comfortably furnished apartment. "I think that you might stay here, for months, unsuspected. A sweeper comes, every day, to do my rooms downstairs. He believes the rest of the house to be untenanted, and you must remain perfectly quiet, during the half hour he is here. Otherwise, no one enters ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... pleasure of seeing several upon vulgar heads. And now, how do you all do?—you in particular, after the worry of yesterday and the day before. I hope Martha had a pleasant visit again, and that you and my mother could eat your beef-pudding. Depend upon my thinking of the chimney-sweeper as soon as I wake to-morrow. Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean[283] that only a third and fourth row could be got; as it is in a front box, however, I hope we shall do pretty well—Shylock, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... to-morrow's sun begins the week, Which will abound with store of ale and cake, With hams of bacon, and with powder'd beef, Stuff d to give field-itinerants relief. Then I, who have within these precincts kept, And ne'er beyond the chimney-sweeper's stept, Will take a loose, and venture to be seen, Since 'twill be Sunday, upon Shanks's green; There, with erected looks and phrase sublime, To talk of unity of place and time, And with much malice, mix'd with ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... distinction which exists between those two dark deposits, and making it sufficiently obvious, that melanotic matter is composed of the constituent elements of the blood, and has its origin within the body. There cannot remain a doubt as to the nature of the chimney sweeper's case; for, from the knowledge which we have of his occupation, and from the chemical properties manifest after investigation, I think I am entitled to declare the black matter obtained from the bronchial glands to be carbon inhaled with ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... features are still to be found within the sound of Bow Bells and Westminster. Those of the Strand and Fleet Street, of the Borough, Bermondsey, Southwark southward of the river, and Bloomsbury in the north, form that debatable ground which is ever busy with hurrying feet. The street-sweeper, though, has mostly disappeared, and the pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than were the Halls of Hampton Court ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... not at home when you called upon me. Pray, how do you like my dress? I assure you I think it's the prettiest here. But do you know there's the most shocking thing in the world happened in the next room! I really believe there's a common chimney-sweeper got in! I assure you it's enough to frighten one to death, for every time he moves the soot smells so you can't think; quite real soot, I assure you! only conceive how nasty! I declare I wish with all my ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the mantle, and immediately over the fire, which is too large. This opening has hitherto been left larger than otherwise it probably would have been made, in order to give a passage to the Chimney-sweeper; but I shall show hereafter how a passage for the Chimney-sweeper may be contrived without leaving the throat of the Chimney of such enormous dimensions as to swallow up and devour all the warm air of the room, instead of merely giving a passage to the smoke and heated vapour which rise ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... punch-houses;—but in Cossitollah all castes and vocations are met, whether their talk be of gold mohurs or cowries; here the Sahib gives the horrid leper a wide berth, and the Baboo walks carefully round the shadow of Mehtur, the sweeper. Therefore, reader, Cossitollah is by all means the street for you to draw profound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the pillow, is a little clock, its face flush with the wall. The room has no corners to gather dirt, wall meets floor with a gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical sweeper. The door frames and window frames are of metal, rounded and impervious to draught. You are politely requested to turn a handle at the foot of your bed before leaving the room, and forthwith the frame turns up into a vertical position, and the bedclothes hang ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... title of Tony Pig; an animal which he perfectly resembled in his nastiness as well as greediness. For if he was dressed in the morning as clean as hands could make him, he would, by running into puddles and kennels, and rolling upon the ground, become as black as a chimney sweeper before noon; and I sincerely believe that he thought it as great a punishment to have his hair combed, or to wash his hands and face, as to be whipped; for he would cry and struggle as much to avoid the one as to escape the other. But, to ease his parents of their heavy ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... up of phonograph records. You say a thing to a man that calls up Record No. 999873 and he puts it in for you, starts his motor and begins to make it go round and round for you. He just tumtytums off some of his subconsciousness for you. Whether he is selling you a carpet sweeper or converting your soul, it is his body that is using his brain and not his brain that ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... father. But of one venerable and aged man I would like to record a few things. He was a gaunt, tall, grey-bearded fellow as thin as a stick-insect, and he performed the most menial of all services, being a sweeper by caste. But what he did was done with passionate devotion. He had seen service in France and spoke a few curious French words. Troops on active service in France certainly are taught some strange phrases. All day he toiled with his kerosene tins and brushes and when he had nothing ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... esto hierosulia kai asebeia]), says an inscription found in this very theatre [300:1], though not yet set up at the time when the 'town-clerk' spoke. So again, where the same speaker describes the city of Ephesus as the 'neocoros,' the 'temple sweeper,' or 'sacristan of the great goddess Artemis,' we find in these inscriptions for the first time a direct example of this term so applied. Though the term 'neocoros' in itself is capable of general application, yet as a matter of fact, when used of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... past of the city by visiting the funeral chapel of the margraves in the crypt of St. Johannis Church. In the little ex-margravely capital there was something of the neighborly interest in the curiosity of strangers which endears Italian witness. The white-haired street-sweeper of Ansbach, who willingly left his broom to guide them to the house of the sacristan, might have been a street-sweeper in Vicenza; and the old sacristan, when he put his velvet skull-cap out of an upper window and professed his willingness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... out and left the district. The old devil left a note for us to say that he had rather be a free crossing sweeper in New York than a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers. By Gar! it was as well that he made a break for it before the note reached us! I guess he won't show his face in ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but most of the girls had decided during dinner what they meant to be. Romola flew to the kitchen and borrowed an apron from the cook, tied a duster round her head, seized up a pail and a carpet-sweeper, and came as 'Domestic Service.' Beata commandeered the boarders' bath-towels and appeared as an Arab, in robe and turban. Peggie, with her dormitory eider-down for a train, was a court lady. Catie draped a scarf over her hair ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... her rail," said Rob, "and we've broken that already. It's that old grizzly hide that did it, I'm sure. We lit fair on top of that 'sweeper,' and our whole weight was almost out of the water when it came up below us. Talk about the power of water, I should say you could see it there, all right—it's ripped our whole ship almost in two! I don't see how we can fix it up ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... a street-sweeper!' bitterly began Leonard.—'Oh, Dr. May, do let me have that!' he cried, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand, as he perceived in the Doctor's button-hole a dove-pink, presented at a cottage door by a grateful patient. For a space he was entirely occupied with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on carpet-sweeper wheels often become so badly worn and streched that they fail to grip the carpet firmly enough to run the sweeper. To remedy this, procure some rubber tape a little wider than the rims of the old wheels, remove the old rubber tires and wind the tape ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... little, dropped his frank air and drawled out in cool, hard tones: "I might remark that that young lady is, I might persoom to say, a friend of mine, which I'm prepared to back up in my best style, and if any blanked blanked son of a street sweeper has any remark to make, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... a strip of superheated shade, a few stirred abroad in the deserted streets; here a policeman, thin blue summer tunic open, helmet in hand, swabbing the sweat from forehead and neck; there a white uniformed street sweeper dragging his rubber-edged mop or a section of wet hose; perhaps a haggard peddler of lemonade making for the Park wall around the Metropolitan Museum where, a little later, the East Side would venture out to sit on the benches, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... who had not come merely to punish Halfvorson, but also to let their wrath break loose, hardly knew how to begin. There was nothing for an angry man to do here. There was not a dog to chase, not a street-sweeper to pick a quarrel with, nor a fine gentleman at whom to ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... White Man's burden— No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper— The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living, And mark them with ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered to the needs of the strong man's very soul in unsuspected, often unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp for tired eyes; a funny bundle of domestic happenings told cleverly to offset ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Pike County our much-enduring jurist took no cash, but found a generous sheriff who entertained him without charge. "He was one of nature's noblemen, from Massachusetts," writes the grateful prosecutor. The lawyers in what was called good practice earned less than a street- sweeper to-day. It is related that the famous Stephen A. Douglas once traveled from Springfield to Bloomington and made an extravagant speech, and having gained his case received a fee of five dollars. In such a state of things it was not ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... who pushed up to Juber Island, and found that there were indeed five thousand there—five thousand sheep and several Arab shepherds. On the opposite bank John had a machine-gun, with which he sniped those who approached the water. He killed mules, and wounded several bhisties[28] and a sweeper. There were also people sniping with rifles, and the Indian regiments had casualties. On our side, the cavalry brought in a prisoner. We had the young gentleman caught at night, and one other; the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... return—increased profit from his crop and increased pleasure of living. Viola Lawson, writing on the subject, "How to Dust and Sweep," makes some pertinent comments. "I think if a house is very dirty, a carpet sweeper is not a very good thing. A broom is best, because you can't get around the corners with a sweeper." Note this hint to the school board: "We spend about one-third of our time in the school house, so it is very important ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... of household equipment which keep causing unnecessary pain, labor, and irritation: that leaky faucet, that worn-out washing machine, that broken light switch, that asthmatic vacuum sweeper, that torn rug, that decrepit snow shovel, that ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... with her industry and skill in 'translating' old boots and shoes, her motherly instincts and efforts to keep her young brother Dick, the crossing-sweeper, honest, because mother had made them promise to be so when she died; the good-natured, agreeable, clever young thief Jenks, the tempter and beguiler of poor Dick; and, above all, the dear dog Scamp, with his knowing ways and ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... great city no chimney was yet smoking—and it was just at the chimneys that I was looking. Suddenly a little head emerged from one of them, and then half a body, the arms resting on the rim of the chimney-pot. 'Ya-hip! ya-hip!' cried a voice. It was the little chimney-sweeper, who had for the first time in his life crept through a chimney, and stuck out his head at the top. 'Ya-hip! ya-hip' Yes, certainly that was a very different thing to creeping about in the dark narrow chimneys! the air blew so fresh, and he could look over the whole city towards the green ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the profit and he the loss. "It's all the same as a gambling-table," said he. "The jobbers and brokers have got the same odds the bank has at Rouge et Noir, and the little capitalist like me is doomed beforehand." Then he told her that there was a crossing-sweeper near the Exchange who came from his native place, and had started as a speculator, and come down to that. Only he called it rising, and used to speak with a shudder of when he dabbled in the funds, and often told him to look sharp, and get a crossing. And lo! one day when he was cleaned out, and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to the post-office could get no authentic intelligence about what was passing, I went there myself. Everybody was in military uniform, everybody was shrugging his shoulders, and everybody was in the condition of a London policeman were he to see himself marched off to the station by a street-sweeper. That the Prussian should have taken the Emperor prisoner, and have vanquished the French armies, had, of course, astonished these worthy bureaucrats, but that they should have ventured to interfere ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the master of the inn, finding he could not get rid of his troublesome guests, and having a chimney-sweeper in his house sweeping other chimneys, he gave the boy directions to descend into the room as above related, whilst he stood at a distance, and enjoyed the droll scene of ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... raised her to my arms: spiling thereby a new weskit and a pair of crimson smalcloes. I rushed forrard. I say, very nearly knocking down the old sweeper who was hobbling away as fast as posibil. We took her to Birch's; we provided her with a hackney-coach and every lucksury, and carried ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bred, like deer, feed on either side of her, and the sapling stems draw shadows on their fawn and white hides, and across the withered, short, dry grass. She belongs to R.'s establishment, I suppose—wife of a Sweeper perhaps, but at this distance she might be a Grecian goddess for she is too far off to distinguish features. The golden brown of her face and the blue-black of the hair under the crimson and gold in full afternoon sun ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... about his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend—Joe, a wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Incongruities and Barbarisms, that we appear a distracted City to Foreigners, who do not comprehend the Meaning of such enormous Outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above Ela, and in Sounds so [exceeding [2]] shrill, that it often sets our Teeth [on [3]] Edge. The Chimney-sweeper is [confined [4]] to no certain Pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest Base, and sometimes in the sharpest Treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest Note of the Gamut. The same Observation might be made on the Retailers of Small-coal, not to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... knives, carving knives and cleavers lay in the center of the table. Other knives were thrust into belts or held in the hands of the men. A fat man in the yellow sarong of a cook stood frozen in the act of handing a knife to a tall one-eyed sweeper. ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... hurried by the wind; a black cat sat in a patch of sunshine on the path washing itself; somebody opened a lower window, and there was a noise of sweeping, presently made indistinguishable by the chorale sung by the sweeper, no doubt Marie, in a pious, Good Friday mood. "Lob Gott ihr Christen allzugleich," chanted Marie, keeping time with her broom. Her voice was loud and monotonous, but Anna listened with a smile, and would have liked ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... clutched at one of the branches. He caught it, and the next moment was unexpectedly ducked overhead in the icy water. He came up gasping, and then understood. The tree was what in the voyageur's nomenclature is known as a "sweeper." Still held by its roots it bobbed up and down with the current, and the extra strain of his weight and the girl's had sunk it deeper in the water. It still moved up and down, and he had not finished ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... said Ellis. "Let us take an example. A crossing-sweeper, we will suppose, is suffering from a certain disease about which the doctors know nothing. Their only chance of discovering how to cure it is to vivisect the patient; and it is found, by the hedonistic calculus, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... easier to carry a carpet sweeper if you take hold near the sweeper part than it is if you take hold at the end ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... as soon as the pressure is removed. Other peas, again, burst at his pressure, and discharge their pollen on him. Now, in the beach pea, and similarly in the vetches, the style is hairy on its inner side, to brush out the pollen on the visitor who sets the automatic sweeper in motion as he alights and moves about. So perfectly have many members of this interesting family adapted their structure to the requirements of insects, and so implicitly do they rely on their automatic mechanism, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ill paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and so ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings. Every bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by a carriage, may now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred and sixty years ago, all the wealth of a great lord like Ormond, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have purchased. Some frightful ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!" Aphorisms on Man, LXIV. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... will be distributed within a week with a handsome bonus of twenty-five pounds to everyone sending in his coupon or cheque for fifteen sovereigns by twelve o'clock next Tuesday, after which hour it is impossible for any one, be he who he may, from Kaiser to Chimney-sweeper, to participate in the enormous profit which will have been ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... fencing, and is always represented with his magic Excalibur named Chan-yao Kuai, 'Devil-slaying Sabre,' and in one hand holds a fly-whisk, Yuen-chou, or 'Cloud-sweeper,' a symbol common in Taoism of being able to fly at will through the air and to walk ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Tower-Hill, where a Gallows had been erected for him at six the same morning. He was richly dressed, in a blue and gold coat, buff waistcoat, trimmed, &c. in full uniform. When brought under the Gallows, he stayed a small space, till his clergyman (a chimney-sweeper) had given him some admonitions: that done, he was drawn, by pulleys, to the top of the Gallows, which was twenty feet high; every person expressing as much satisfaction as if it had been the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... arrived to speak to Roger and Astro, he found them in the tunnel, working as a team of a shoveler and a sweeper. Roger would sweep up a little pile of dirt and Astro would shovel it into a ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... the cook, and the slushy, the sweeper that swept the board, The picker-up, and the penner, with the rest ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... portraits of the Czar. I searched here, but all were too sophisticated in their bright brown frames, and their air of being the latest thing from Paris and London. Then I crossed the road, threading my way through the carriages and motor cars, past the old white-bearded sweeper with the broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the English Shop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina. Here, indeed, I could fancy that I was in the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, or Truro, or Canterbury. A demure English provincialism was over everything, and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... succeed to the throne, you will pay me," the Baron de Grost said. "If you do not succeed, remember that I am a rich man, and that I shall miss this money no more than the sixpence which you might throw to a crossing-sweeper." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this summer since you've all been away—sitting on that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks—especially the black one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she is with me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go on being friends as ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... washed their hands clean; nay, he sometimes flogged a boy without ever telling him what it was for; and frequently, while his hand was in, he would, gnashing his large white teeth, which looked white from the same cause that a chimney-sweeper's teeth look so, merely because they were such a great contrast to his black fiend-like visage, he would dart his eye round the different classes to see which boy he should fix upon as his next victim. During these disgusting periods, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... continent with a dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's habits. Mr. Harrington Surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early forenoon. So much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon by engagements then, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Jackeen's Irish terrier is Bran,—though he does not closely resemble the great Finn's sweet-voiced, gracefully-shaped, long-snouted hound; the coracle lying on the shore of the little lough—the coracle made of skin, like the old Irish boats—is the Wave-Sweeper; and the faithful mare that we hire by the day is, by your leave, Enbarr of the Flowing Mane. No warrior was ever killed on the back of this famous steed, for she was as swift as the clear, cold wind of spring, travelling with equal ease and speed on land and sea, an' may the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shadow of snow-capped cliffs. There the grass is of the liveliest tint—a kind of salad-green. The air is sweet and fine; everything looks clean, well kept, well swept—perhaps the wind is the keeper and the sweeper. All along the way there is a very striking contrast of color in rock, meadows, and sky; the whole is as appetizing to the sight as a ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... places where people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered—'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Elizabeth, 'that Knecht Ruprecht is the German terrifier of naughty children, the same as the chimney-sweeper in England, or Coeur de Lion in Palestine, or the ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plowman, Leave the forests to the weary, Leave the heather to the rover, Leave the copses to the stranger, Leave the alleys to the beggar, Leave the courtyards to the rambler, Leave the portals to the servant, Leave the matting to the sweeper, Leave the highways to the roebuck, Leave the woodland-glens to lynxes, Leave the lowlands to the wild-geese, And the birch-tree to the cuckoo. Now I leave these friends of childhood, Journey southward with my husband, To the arms of Night and Winter, O'er ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... what it was to feel such an insignificant mortal. Standing here in the rain, he saw no distinction between himself and the ragged, muddy crossing-sweeper; alike, they were lost in the huge welter of common London. On the other hand, there in the hard-fronted, exclusive-looking house sat Irene Derwent, a pearl of women, the prize of wealth, distinction, and high manliness. What was this wild dream he had been ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... you—does the Government, I mean—suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How will the police—Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans—how will THEY work under him? We couldn't say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper; but my people will say a good deal, you know that. It's a piece of ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... considerable force in scraping off the inequalities. A metal cutting edge, such as a hoe or scraper, will be found useful. A court should be swept with a coarse broom to distribute the fine material evenly. Another very good sweeper can be made from a piece of wood about six or eight feet long to which several thicknesses of bagging have been tacked or fastened. The final step in making a court consists in marking it out. Most ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of the kind ever made to me, stung me to the quick. Strange, I had never before considered myself in the light of a beggar; and yet, was I not so, just as much as a sweeper of a crossing?" ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of meditating how to escape the trouble of going further. [Footnote: In every village the Dowrah, or Guide, is an official person, upon the public establishment, and receives a portion of the harvest or other revenue, along with the Smith, the Sweeper, and the Barber. As he gets nothing from the travellers whom it is his office to conduct, he never scruples to shorten his own journey and prolong theirs by taking them to the nearest village, without ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Persian, which had been reposing in her lap, and which now skulked off resentfully, with a swollen tail, to hide its indignation under a chair, 'you are as bad as an oracle. I have yards and yards of frilling to sew on before I dress—my sleeves—my neck—my sweeper.' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... her existence. He was leaning against the wall with the habituated pose of one who is frequently obliged to lean against walls for long periods of time, and he was conversing in an elucidatory manner with the elderly crossing-sweeper who still braves the motor-cars at that point. He became aware of her emergence with a start, he ceased to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of town? Where is the term that's claptrappier? Means out of temper, or out of your mind. Boot-black or old crossing-sweeper's far happier, Tied to his task in the town—as you'll find. Picking up coppers far better than picking up Shells by the sea, or sham friends on the snore. Bah! What have buffers to do with such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper—whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... morning after his removal in a condition of vinous prostration from the Lancaster flagstones, his jocose friends concocted the brief, sent it to him with a bad guinea, and proclaimed the success of their device. When the chimney-sweeper's boy met his death by falling from a high gallery to the floor of the court-house at the York Assizes, whilst Sir Thomas Davenport was speaking, it was John Scott who—arguing that the orator's dullness had ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance. [(Quoted from a review in the "Daily News," October 17, 1871, of the Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... to get out of these stiff and starched clothes; but I have to be careful of them, for me tailor—bad cess to him!—will give no credit, and there's little of the riddy knocking about. Without good clothes on me back I'd be like a sweeper without a broom." ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Dwarf-King to the other King, "the Lord Chief Justice condemns you to be for the rest of your natural life Master Sweeper of ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... hood-maker. Jason was a bracelet-maker. Don Pietro de Castille, a carrier of indulgences. Morgan, a beer-brewer. Huon of Bordeaux, a hooper of barrels. Pyrrhus, a kitchen-scullion. Antiochus, a chimney-sweeper. Octavian, a scraper ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and so was not one of his teacher's favorites. One day his master, vexed by his dulness, cried out, "Smiles, you will never be fit for anything but sweeping the streets of your native borough!" From that day the boy's mates called him by the name of the street sweeper in the little town. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Scarborough struck Mrs. Mountjoy with the deepest awe. It was not at first borne in upon her to believe that Captain Mountjoy Scarborough, an officer in the Coldstreams, and the acknowledged heir to the Tretton property, had vanished away as a stray street-sweeper might do, or some milliner's lowest work-woman. But at last there were advertisements in all the newspapers and placards on all the walls, and Mrs. Mountjoy did understand that the captain was gone. She could as yet hardly believe that he was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... long time now since Diamond had seen North Wind, or even thought much about her. And as his father drove along, he was thinking not about her, but about the crossing-sweeper, and was wondering what made him feel as if he knew her quite well, when he could not remember anything of her. But a picture arose in his mind of a little girl running before the wind and dragging her broom after her; and from that, by degrees, ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... two orderlies, my own orderly, the cook and cook's mate, the district gunner (who was busy keeping our three very old guns, mounted in the tower, polished up), the office clerk and the barrack sweeper, the morning parade ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Bengal Hills. From Mogul Serai my road has been through territory not yet invaded by the revolutionizing influence of the railway, and consequently the dak bungalows are still kept up in form to provide travellers with accommodation. Chowkeedar, punkah-wallah, and sweeper are in regular attendance, and one can usually obtain curried rice, chicken, dhal, and chuppatties. An official regulation of prices is posted conspicuously in the bungalow: For room and charpoy, Rs 1; dinner, Rs 1-8; chota-hazari, Rs 1, and so on through the scale. The prices are moderate enough, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... poor fellow like you not to be able to get dollars for his notes; hand them out, and I'll give you specie for them myself!" The blackguard had not a cent in his pocket, and walked away looking very foolish. He reminded me of a little chimney-sweeper at the Tower Hamlets election, asking—"Vot vos my hopinions about primaginitur?"—a very important point to him certainly, he having no parents, and having been ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... SWEEP, SWEEPER. The name given at Yale and other colleges to the person whose occupation it is to sweep the students' rooms, make their ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... magnificent, it hardly indeed sounds cleanly—that whatever trade fails, whatever profession, thanks to the advance of civilisation, becomes obsolete, that of the man with the dust-cart, of the scavenger, of the sweeper, won't." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... board the ships in the harbour, and at Spithead, and the ponds dragged in the neighbourhood, to no effect, it was concluded that the Gipsies had stolen him. The boy was found a few years afterwards, at Kingston-upon-Thames, apprenticed to a chimney sweeper. He had been enticed away by a person who had given him sweet-meats; but not by ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... with consisted of a female chimney-sweeper and her children, who, on my sitting down in the kitchen, soon drank to my health, and began a conversation ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... again have I been engaged in a very black business,—as black as a coal; and, though my face and hands have undergone a thorough purification, I feel not altogether fit to hold communion with doves. Methinks my profession is somewhat akin to that of a chimney-sweeper; but the latter has the advantage over me, because, after climbing up through the darksome flue of the chimney, he emerges into the midst of the golden air, and sings out his melodies far over the heads of the whole tribe of weary earth-plodders. My toil to-day has been cold and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only suffered the sow to escape, but joined his vociferations to the general scream. This alarmed Mr Barlow, who, coming up to the place, found his pupil in the most woeful plight, daubed from head to foot, with his face and hands as black as those of any chimney-sweeper. He inquired what was the matter; and Tommy, as soon as he had recovered breath enough to speak, answered in this manner: "Sir, all this is owing to what you told me about taming animals; I wanted to make them tame and gentle, and to love me, and you see the consequences." ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... cellar, and three or four of the little ones were crushed. That was the end. The trucks disappeared. Even Tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. They were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking-places of all manner of mischief at night, but I have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide "slips" at ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the bungalow are of hard wood. They are waxed a few times each year, and a little work each morning with dust mop and carpet sweeper keeps them in good order. The washing is ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... his own and his partner's washing, scrubbing, mending, and cooking, and saw no degradation in it, was somewhat inconsistently irritated by menial functions in men, and although he gave extravagantly to waiters, and threw a dollar to the crossing-sweeper, there was always a certain shy avoidance of them in his manner. Coming from the theatre one night Uncle Billy was, however, seriously concerned by one of these crossing-sweepers turning hastily before them and being knocked ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... eats it, than a man should. But really I can't accuse him of anything worse than such little weaknesses. The first floor is occupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes out chiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rare occasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queer creature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; who peers at you, jerks and grins; who seems ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... them!"[2225] They would rather throw it out of the window. Which was actually done by the Marshal de Richelieu with a purse he had given to his grandson, and which the lad, not knowing how to use, brought back intact. Money, on this occasion, was at least of service to the passing street-sweeper that picked it up. But had there been no passer-by to pick it up, it would have been thrown into the river. One day Mme. de B—, being with the Prince de Conti, hinted that she would like a miniature of her canary bird set in a ring. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bustle of a crowded street, where by turns were to be discovered, justling each other, parsons, lawyers, apothecaries, projectors, excisemen, organists, picture-sellers, bear and monkey-leaders, fiddlers and bailiffs. The barber and the chimney-sweeper were however always observed to be careful in avoiding the touch of each other, as if contamination ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... own; ergo, you're the very man for this business. The thing is to be done: accept that for a certainty. It's only a question of time. Indeed, when you look at life philosophically, what is there on earth that is not a question of time? Give the crossing-sweeper between this and Chancery-lane time enough, and he might develop into a Rothschild. He might want nine hundred years or so to do it in; but there's no doubt he could do it, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to gather dirt, wall meets floor with a gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical sweeper [sucked out by the now-used cleaning-machine.—Author]. The door-frames and window-frames are of metal, rounded and impervious to draft. You are politely requested to turn a handle at the foot of your bed before leaving the room, ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... hoh! Oftentimes would he sing at a door like a singing man, and when they did come to give him his reward, he would turn his back and laugh. In these humours of his he had many pretty songs, which I will sing as perfect as I can. For his chimney-sweeper's humours he had these songs: the first is to the tune of I have been ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Rikki-tikki ran to the thornbush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Appearances to save his only care; So things seem right, no matter what they are. 300 In him his parents saw themselves renew'd, Begotten by Sir Critic on Saint Prude. Then came drum, trumpet, hautboy, fiddle, flute; Next snuffer, sweeper, shifter, soldier, mute: Legions of angels all in white advance; Furies, all fire, come forward in a dance; Pantomime figures then are brought to view, Fools, hand in hand with fools, go two by two. Next came the treasurer of either house; One with full purse, t'other with not a sous. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... nothing, but she looked round the untidy rooms, where everything that would hold it had a linen cover with a Cluny-lace edge—all of them soiled and wrinkled. She watched Tufik, chanting about the plains of Lebanon and shoving the carpet-sweeper with a bang against her best furniture; and, with Hannah's salad in mind, she sniffed a warning odor from the kitchen that told of more Syrian experiments with her digestion. Tish surrendered: that morning she wrote to Hannah that Tufik was ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... last, or I stand around until they talk to me. So many persons wear blinders in the city. They don't know how wonderful it is. Once, on Christmas Eve, I pretended to shop on Fourteenth Street, just to listen to the crowd on its final round—mother's carpet sweeper, you understand, or a drum for the heir. A crowd on Christmas is different—it's gayer—reckless—it's an exalted Saturday night. Afterwards I heard Midnight Mass at the Russian Cathedral. Then there are always ferryboats—the band on the boat to Staten ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... a bird. Hurrah! the old sweeper has lit. Now the cobwebs will fly. Don't hurry back," shouted the man; and a faint, far-off voice answered, "I shall be ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a summer sky, but he scratched his head and turned over the rose-stem in his mouth reflectively. "So be it, then, if it must be; but yesterday the Devon sea-sweeper, Francis Drake, overhauled me in my cottage, coming from the Queen, who had infused him of me. 'I have heard of you from a high masthead,' said he. 'If the Spanish main allure you, come with me. There be galleons yonder ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gentleman-nature of the pompous old baronet, Dedlock, asserts itself under suffering, belong to a high order of writing. There is another most affecting example, taking the lead of the rest, in the poor street-sweeper Jo; which has made perhaps as deep an impression as anything in Dickens. "We have been reading Bleak House aloud," the good Dean Ramsay wrote to me very shortly before his death. "Surely it is one of his most powerful and successful! ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... studied his predicament. He commenced this necessary study early in the morning in his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis. The early carts were taking their way down town through a blue haze, which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the walk-sweeper, and the rag-picker, were the only creatures moving in Osgood's neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and resolve, but Osgood's head was not ready. The still Champagne that he had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a glass of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... was, however, but little disposed to remain passive in his imprisonment, and in the wantonness of his ever-active disposition amused himself by climbing up the chimney, and having at length reached the summit, endeavoured, by imitating the well-known tone of the chimney-sweeper, and calling out as lustily as he could, 'Sweep, sweep!' to attract the attention of the people below. Even on his father the incorrigible lad seems on more than one occasion to have tried his little game. One day, while the worthy Doctor was marrying ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... place where I sleep?" said another crossing-sweeper to him one day, when he told him his trouble. "The little 'un 'ud keep warm there." And he painted in glowing colours the glories of the cheap lodging-house where he had ...
— Willie the Waif • Minie Herbert
... imperfect housekeeper, Though faultless in figure and charming of face, In ruffles of ribbon and trailings of lace Usurping the part of a common street-sweeper, You never can pose as a type of your race In frowsy appearance mid ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... on you, on me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from Bartholomew's. She's got a little court of 'em already. And if there's nobody there, she practises on the old German baker in the shop, or coaxes the black sweeper ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would consider the house to be defiled. According to the old rule, if a Brahman touches a man of an impure caste, as a Chamar (tanner) or Basor (basket-maker), he should bathe and change his loin-cloth, and if he touches a sweeper he should change his sacred thread. Now, however, educated Brahmans usually wear white cotton trousers and black or brown coats of cloth, alpaca or silk with the normal allowance of buttons, and European shoes and boots which they keep on indoors. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Oh, no! Santa Claus never allows himself to be caught in that way. You never see even his feet. He never leaves his shoes on the floor, nor dirty old brushes, nor shovels. It is not Santa Claus—it is only a chimney-sweeper. ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... is ready to teach to others. The quaint remarks of children which another would scarcely have heard, he preserves—little flies in the priceless amber of his Attic wit—and has his "Praise of chimney-sweepers" (as William Blake has written, with so much natural pathos, the Chimney-sweeper's Song) valuing carefully their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of white sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel Castle, as he tells the story, anticipating something of the mood of our deep humourists of the last generation. His simple mother-pity ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... suspended in the air, they should have arrived in the opposite direction. Coming from the south, we might believe them to be warned by effluvia carried on the wind; coming from the north in time of mistral, that resistless sweeper of earth and air, how can we suppose that they had perceived, at a remote distance, what we will call an odour? The idea of a flow of odoriferous atoms in a direction contrary to that of the aerial torrent seems to ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the Whatcheer House that a vacated room was subjected to a "thorough cleaning." Translated this meant a run over the floor with a carpet sweeper and a change of sheets. The door of No. 19 had been left unlocked, and while Mayer sat in the office conning the paper, Jim with the necessary rags and brooms was putting No. 19 in shape for the next tenant. An inside bolt on the door made him secure against interruption, and the bed drawn ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars. Flannelly lines ran through the honey-stores, the pollen-larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, through the babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards spent half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb. The caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... simple cares of her household she was now ready to cast her eyes abroad, and relieve in so far as she might the distress around her. The first object of charity she encountered was an old crossing-sweeper. She addressed him in a matter-of-fact way which was intended to conceal her fluttering self-consciousness. She inquired whether he had a wife; whether he had any children; whether they were not rather poor. And having ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... half anger, half ecstasy, Pinchas galloped toward the fiddling and banging orchestra. A harmless sweeper in his path was herself swept aside. But her fallen broom tripped up the runner. He fell with an echoing clamour, to which his clattering cane contributed, and clouds of dust arose and gathered where ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... The Burnt-Offering The Unseen Face Concerning Jesus A Memorial of Africa A.M.D To Garibaldi, with a Book To S.F.S Russell Gurney To One threatened with Blindness To Aubrey de Vere General Gordon The Chrysalis The Sweeper of ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... and Italian towns where she had been chiefly educated; the rest she was satisfied to imagine. Above all, she loved to charm those with whom she associated—loved it in a half-unconscious way. Were it to a poor blind beggar woman, or a little crossing sweeper, she would speak as gently and modulate her voice as carefully as to the most brilliant partner or the greatest lady. This might be tenderness of nature, or the profound instinct to win liking and admiration. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... perspiration was out over her face, sparkling forth again after each mopping. A box arrived from a jeweler's and one from a department store. They were a pie knife and a table crumber in the form of a miniature carpet sweeper. The usual futilities with which such occasions can be cluttered and which have shaped the destinies of immemorial women into a ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... petty officer on board ships of war, whose employment was to see that the decks were kept clean. Also, a man formerly appointed to use the swabs in drying up the decks. He was sometimes called ship's sweeper; more commonly captain ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of the composure so laboriously acquired at Madam Winterbottom's salon had evaporated. He felt as if he were swinging in midair hitched to a scudding aeroplane by a rope about his middle. The mucous membranes of his throat were as dry and as full of dust as the entrails of a carpet sweeper. His vision was blurred and he had no control over his muscles. Weakly he leaned against the table in front of the jury, the room swaying about him. The pains of hell gat hold upon him. He was dying. Even the staff felt compunction—all but the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... eat honest bread, is it not so, La Goualeuse? I think so; it is my ambition. I say it to myself every day, thus: on leaving here I shall not let the grass grow under my feet. I will become a rag-picker, a crossing-sweeper, but I'll be correct; one owes that, if not to one's self, at least to one's children, when one has the honor of having any," said she with a kind of pride. "And who will take care of your child while you work?" answered La Goualeuse; "would it not be better, if ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... that little kingdom, with a population of not more than forty millions, has had the honour of colonizing half the globe; but "these countries are our colonies no longer." Such are a few of the wonders of 2130! In the Dialogue is an admirable joke with a scientific street-sweeper and a learned beggar, who pleads necessitas non habet legem, and "embraces the profession of an operative mendicant." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... Giles's and Bloomsbury parishes, and partly in that of St. Pancras. Baltimore House, built, towards the northeast of Bedford House, by Lord Baltimore, in 1763, appears to have been the only erection since Strype's survey to this period, with the exception of a chimney-sweeper's cottage still further north, and part of which is still to be seen in Rhodes's Mews, Little Guildford Street. In 1800, Bedford House was demolished entirely; which with its offices and gardens, had been the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... me tobacco, which I do not use, and rum, which I do not drink. He accepted sweetmeats from me. And he called me a name that would make the sahib gulp, a word that I suppose he had picked up from a barrack-sweeper on the Bengal side of India. Then he slapped me on the back, and after that sat with his arm around me while the entertainment lasted. When we left the tent he swore roundly at a newcomer to the front for not saluting me, who am not entitled to salute. That is the way of the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... not done in the trenches, nor yet in a submarine, Mine-sweeper or battle-cruiser; it was not filmed on the screen; For, though the man who performed it had three gold stripes on his sleeve, It happened in Nineteen-Twenty, when he was in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... if a character for sanity is of no further use to you," said Paul. "Tell them to anyone you can get to believe you—tell the crossing-sweeper and the policemen, tell your grandmother, tell the horse-marines—it will amuse them. Only, you shall tell them on the other side of my front door. Shall I call anyone to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... profession has its unpresentable aspects, which ought not to be seen by out-siders. Think of a sculptor's studio and of the sculptor himself when he is modelling a large figure or group in the clay. He might be a bricklayer or a road-sweeper if you judge by his appearance. This is the tomb I was ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing. Make your way into Germany—What do you find there? an aristocracy of functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess—for the women there must be better-half even in their titles—you find society led, or, to speak more correctly, society consisting of functionaries, and they, every office son of them, and their wives—nay, their very curs—alike ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... for twenty years! By the Gospel, it was black ingratitude that the son of Costantin should be set apart for their priesthood, be made an Englishman, a grand khawajah, whilst Iskender was offered employment—mark the kindness!—as a scullion and a sweeper in their house—Iskender, who had been their favourite till a ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the back of an anarchist that must have been the whole extent of his connection with the underworld. He was, however, a man who liked to talk with all sorts of people, and he may have gathered those illuminating facts at second or third hand, from a crossing-sweeper, from a retired police officer, from some vague man in his club, or even, perhaps, from a Minister of State met at some public ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... flattering proposal, but I have no wish to ornament your table, no desire to expose my beauty to your perpetual admiration, and no ambition to advance your political career. I do not love you, and I had rather become the wife of a crossing-sweeper that I loved, than that of a member of the government for whom I have every respect, but ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... in return for her board and lodging, and he told her one morning that he had forty pounds saved up which she should have, and welcome, if she was in need." The case of the bath-chair woman was not less touching and generous, for she and her husband, a crossing-sweeper, also put their savings at the disposal of an invalid lady his wife used to wheel out every day, telling her that, though their cottage was only small, they did possess a tiny spare room, and they would be so glad if she would come to them as their honoured guest, supposing—as at present ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... lose nothing, I can make any country mine. I have a private coat for Italian Stilettos, I can be treacherous with the Walloon, drunk with the Dutch, a chimney-sweeper with the Irish, a gentleman with the Welsh and true arrant thief with the English. What then is my ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... hammocks were all floating about in dreadful disorder. The sheep, cow, pigs, and poultry, were all washed overboard out of the waist and drowned; no voice could be heard, and no orders were given; all discipline was suspended; every man was equal to his neighbour; captain and sweeper clung alike to the same ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat |
